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Ptolemy Apion, the last king of the HellenisticKingdom of Cyrenaica left his kingdom to the Roman Republic when he died childless in 96BCE.[1] Rome readily accepted this inheritance from Ptolemy Apion but preferred to leave the administration to local rulers, rather than enforcing direct control. However, by the 70's BC, civil uprisings by Jewish settlers began to destabilise the province and the Senate was forced to take action. In 74 BC, they sent a low level official, the quaestor Cornelius Lentulus Marcellinus,to officially annex Cyrenaica as a Roman province and restore order. That the Senate sent such a low ranking official indicates the political difficulty the Republic had in governing its growing empire, as ell as indicting the ease with which Cyrenaica was willing to submit to Roman governance and the stability it brought.[2]

In 63 BC Crete and Cyrenaica were combined into a single province with its capital at Gortyn in Crete. Because this arrangement was geographically inconvenient Diocletian divided the province in 298.[3][4]